Hi,

About, "If we look at the map of Saqqara with south at the top as the ancient Egyptians viewed the world.."

Just out of curiosity, what's the rest of the sentence?

Clearly Lehner is talking about a modern map and not an AE map. The one and only extant indigenous AE map that pertains to geography -- a world view -- is the Turin payrus map of Wadi Hammamat, from c. 1150 BC. The orientation of the map is such that the top of the papyrus, as is made clear from the writing, is situated to the south-east. Of importance in determining what the author of the map considered to be 'up' is the illustration of a tree, which has its top oriented to the north.

Here is imo a good web site about this: [www.eeescience.utoledo.edu]

A dogmatic adherence to a convention of AE directional orientation of facing the south and robotically demanding that 'south-is-up' apparently must require that trees grow upside down. Additionally, it would be helpful to consider an analysis of the Djoser reliefs which involve a dual orientation of facing both south and east. See Florence Dunn Friedman's explanation of this in JARCE XXXII (1995).

Ken